


The Bat Way

by SunnyBlue



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Attempt at Humor, Batfamily (DCU), Batfamily meets Young Justice, Cassandra Cain is an angel and you can't change my mind, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Just let them be a happy family dammit, Protective Batfamily (DCU), Protective Cassandra Cain, Protective Damian Wayne, Protective Dick Grayson, Protective Jason Todd, Protective Siblings, Self-Indulgent, She's also a badass though, Sibling Bonding, Tim Drake's Missing Spleen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23412865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunnyBlue/pseuds/SunnyBlue
Summary: “Are we gonna do this, like, the Bat way, or the normal person way?”“You mean are we gonna turn it into a weird joke when we talk about it because none of you are capable of expressing human emotions?”“I mean exactly that, yes.”- - -Tim is injured while fighting Two-Face and, because of circumstances that may or may not involve the kid's lack of spleen and a low stock of Bat-Antibiotics, his siblings are forced to take him to Mount Justice instead of the Batcave for medical care. Which is fine. Really. The only problem is that the Team is unaware that Jason is alive. Also, they're unaware of Damian and Cass's existences, and of the fact that the Robins are all siblings, and of the fact that the Bats aren't actually harboring a dangerous villain in the Red Hood, but rather a dangerous-but-friendly anti-hero in the Red Hood. Big difference.Fine, so maybe they have some explaining to do. But dammit if they're not gonna do it the Bat way.
Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake, Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Comments: 99
Kudos: 1746





	1. I'm gonna be really mad if you kill someone over this

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been writing for my entire life and this is the first time I've ever published or in any way shared any of my work ever. Not sure why I decided that Batfamily fanfiction was the ideal debut genre, but here I am, and presumably here you are! Which is really cool! So thanks for stopping in :)
> 
> This story takes place sometime between seasons two and three of Young Justice. The plot here only kind of lines up with the timeline, but y'know, we're mostly here for the wholesome family bonding.

“Recognized -- Nightwing, B-0-1 -- Robin, B-2-2 -- Unrecognized; override Nightwing, B-0-1 -- Unrecognized; override Nightwing, B-0-1.”

Conner watched, eyebrows drawn, as the zeta tubes leading into the basement of Mount Justice flashed bright white and four silhouetted figures began materializing inside. It was very unlike Nightwing to bring a non-member into the cave; in fact, Conner was pretty sure he’d never done it before. He was one of the most secretive people Conner knew, kept his ID better than any of them. So who was he busy doing the Bat-equivalent of spilling his guts to? And why was Barbara running towards the tubes, too?

Scattered fragments of conversations filtered in before the bodies had fully materialized, and Conner caught -- uh, some of it? Not enough to make sense, but he was also pretty sure that regardless of what he’d heard, he would’ve been equally confused.

“--swear this is ridiculous, Dick, there’s no reason to make this a--”  
“--literally out of your mind if you think this isn’t a big deal--”  
“--re actually sitting here bleeding out telling us this, do you reali--”  
“--imbeciles, all of you; you wouldn’t recognize basic human self-preservation if it killed you--”  
“--like you would, either, demon brat--”

“Boys!” Barbara shouted into the tube, with blatant annoyance in her voice that Conner never would’ve expected from her. “Shut up. Where’s Orphan?”

The figures finally solidified, and the reason that had taken so long instantly became clear: the four people who emerged were all grouped too closely together for the machine to parse them out easily, which was exactly why they had a rule about standing at least two feet away from another person when using the zeta tubes. The reason that rule had apparently been disregarded here, though, was also clear: Robin, whom Connor could now easily recognize, was balanced on another man’s back, head lolling but eyes clearly still clinging to that detective alertness as blood dripped behind the man holding him. The other two figures were helping support them, one with a hand in Robin’s hair and the other gripping a fistful of the first’s jacket. The sound of Robin’s -- of Tim’s -- blood dripping on the floor echoed throughout the cave, eerie and unsettling, and Conner felt a little sick at the smell of it that his enhanced nose could pick up. Blessings and curses, he supposed. 

Conner quickly scanned the scene with his thermal vision, ignoring his confusion about the situation for the time being in favor of zeroing in on the lower left side of Robin’s chest, which was far warmer -- and therefore far bloodier, he reasoned -- than it should’ve been. He bit his lip and stopped scanning, stepping forward before he realized his feet were moving, but the man holding Robin on his back let out a strange, low snarl and raised his shoulders slightly, covering more of the kid’s face. Conner shook his head with wide eyes. What? Who was this person? Why was he wearing a red helmet? Why was there another, like, concerningly little kid wearing a completely different Robin suit? Why did Nightwing let them in?

Oh, shit, Nightwing.

Conner quickly shifted his focus to his old friend. “What happened? What is still happening?”

Nightwing had looked at the red-masked man before Conner had spoken, and they exchanged words briefly. Nightwing said something like "stand down, idiot, you’re more dramatic than B," to which the other replied by waggling his head mockingly like a true adult. He would’ve flipped him off if his hands weren’t occupied with Robin, but he settled for the next best thing.

“One second, Conner, sorry,” Barbara said, glancing at him. He nodded wearily, and she turned her attention back to the newcomers. By this point the cave had become occupied by a few of the young heroes who had come running when they heard the zeta tube call out unrecognized entrants: Impulse, Blue Beetle, Beast Boy, and La’gaan, standing off to one side near the bay door, confusion written all over their faces. Conner remained closer to the control console in the center, beside an equally confused Mal. “Hey! Earth to Bird Brains!” Barbara called, that same annoyance lacing her tone. Huh. This seemed almost… familiar to them. “Where the hell is Orphan?”

“On the way,” Nightwing replied, gesturing for his companions to follow him out of the tube. They did, with no small amount of bitching and moaning amongst themselves, lines like "who died and left him in charge?" from the red-masked one followed by "you did" from Robin, and a surprising snort from the first again. Nightwing ignored them, but there was a poorly-suppressed smile on his face. “She’s just finishing up ditching the last of Harvey’s goons; volunteered for distraction duty. I think she just wanted to punch something, though.” 

Batgirl nodded, then looked past Nightwing as worry creased her brow. “And Red?” 

He turned and took in the scene behind him, too: the other two were doing a good job keeping Tim awake and talking, but he was still fading pretty fast. Dick sighed. “Lucky hit, clean through and through, right between two kevlar plates in his suit -- on both sides. Harvey actually did it himself, from a catwalk twenty yards away.”

Barbara’s eyes widened. “What? When did Harvey turn crackshot?”

“He didn’t,” Dick replied. He shook his head, teeth clenched slightly in that 'this wasn’t anyone’s fault but I’m gonna blame myself anyway' look that Barbara knew so well. She also knew he was working on that, though, so other than a stern look that he acknowledged with a nod, she didn’t press him about it. “It really was just a lucky shot. Like, a really, really lucky shot. But the gun itself is the problem this time.”

“The gun itself?”

He nodded. “Hood got a good look at it; said it was a LeMat, a real one, original, but modified to have an automatic hammer.” He took an ugly, misshapen lump of blood-crusted metal out of his belt and dropped it in her gloved hand. “Still fires the original rounds, too. Like, from the 1870s. We don’t know how old or how gross that thing is. And with Red’s whole… uh… internal situation, I’m worried about a literal dirty bullet, especially coming from Harvey. I didn’t want to risk treating him in the cave; we’re too low on antibiotics and antiseptic.”

Barbara’s eyes filled with understanding and she nodded quickly. “I’ll prep the infirmary and comm you when it’s ready. Keep pressure on the wounds and keep him talking for as long as you can.” She turned and ran off down the hall. She knew Dick knew to do those things, obviously, and didn’t need to be told, but it was easier for her not to worry if she let the Bat in her take the wheel, give and follow orders just as she’d been trained. Tim would be fine; really, he would, from the actual gunshot wound, at least. It was the possibility of infection that she was worried about. Dick was right to bring him here, to bring all of them here, even with how little warning he gave her. They all knew the take-care-of-Tim drill like the collective back of their hand, and he was right that Mount Justice currently had a more updated medical facility; Dick had essentially combined the best place to take care of Tim with the best people to take care of Tim.

It was definitely the right call.

~

Back in the cave, Nightwing had gone back to Robin and the newcomers, and Conner had gone back to having no idea what was going on. Not that he ever left that state. His patience was wearing thin for it. On a common courtesy level, he knew it was rude to use his super-hearing on private conversations. On a right now level, he didn’t care; there were too many questions going unanswered and if he knew anything about Nightwing, it was that he wouldn’t leave an injured Bat if he could help it, and that included leaving to give him answers. So Conner didn’t feel too bad about focusing in and eavesdropping.

Nightwing was standing in front of the rest of them with his back to Conner, carding his fingers through Robin’s hair and speaking in hushed tones with the other two. “You guys didn’t get too banged up?”

The one who wasn’t holding Robin (the one who, for the record, looked like he was maybe twelve years old, tops) nodded confidently. “As you know, Grayson, I would never stoop so low as to allow myself to get injured. Particularly not in this fashion, I might add.” He rolled his eyes behind his domino -- Conner could tell from years of seeing Dick do it -- and untangled his fingers from their grip on the jacket to rest his hand on Tim’s right arm, which was hanging down limply over the big one’s shoulder. “Although I suppose it would be humiliating to the name of the Bat if we were to allow such a dishonorable attack on one of our own to go unpunished.”

Robin, head lolling more and more against the red one’s shoulder, snorted a light laugh. “L’ve you too, Dami.” The small one scowled and grumbled, but didn’t move his hand.

Nightwing sighed heavily, about to protest the suggested punishment, but the red-masked one nodded as well and cut him off. “We’re all good, Big Bird. It’s the little guy I’m worried about. Not you,” he said dismissively when the small one’s fiery eyes shot up to meet his and a growl brewed in his throat. The masked one hummed, shifting Robin’s weight. “But don’t worry; when Dami and I go after Harvey, we’ll make sure you’re asleep and don’t find out.”

“‘M g’nna be really mad if you kill s’meone over this…” Tim muttered, surprising Conner. The kid apparently had a gunshot wound, and had been bleeding for some time; how the hell was he still awake?

“You heard him,” Nightwing said simply, but Conner could hear the note of casual avoidance in his tone, like maybe he wouldn’t entirely be opposed to killing whoever this Harvey was after all.

The masked one snorted, sounding impossibly similar to Tim, and turned slightly to look at the boy resting his head on his shoulder. “You hangin’ in, kiddo?” Tim mumbled an mm-hmm, but his eyes had started fluttering open and closed on increasing intervals, and the masked one shot a look at Nightwing. 

Conner couldn’t see his face, but Nightwing reacted like he could, responding with an urgent nod. He kneeled down to be at eye-level with the small one, reaching out a hand to set on his shoulder. “Damian, I need you to go find Babs and help her finish prepping the infirmary. It’s down the east hallway there; two lefts and a right. Go.” Damian (or so apparently named) nodded, but paused when he went to remove his hand from Tim’s arm. Nightwing noticed and smiled reassuringly. “Dami. Hey.” The kid looked back at him. “He’s gonna be fine. He’s a Robin, remember? We’re made of tough stuff.”

Damian scoffed and removed his hand. “I am, yes, but Drake is an incredibly inferior Robin. I am merely concerned with his negligence of his duties.” He scampered off down the hallway Dick had pointed out, and the man watched him go, shaking his head but with a smile on his face.

He stood back up and went back to stroking Tim’s hair. “What a little shit,” the masked one said flatly, as if stating a fact, and a laugh bubbled up from Robin. The masked one turned his attention there. “So, Replacement. Babybird. Timmers. Timbo.” Tim grunted and he took that as acknowledgement. “What’s the deal here, huh? You haven’t even redecorated since I’ve been gone! Plus, I heard that tube call you Robin. What’s the deal there, Red? Dami’s gonna be pissed when he realizes.”

Tim giggled, airy and high-pitched. “...Was too lazy… to ch’nge… my c’nfirmation codes…”

The masked one barked a surprised laugh. “What, that’s it? You didn’t wanna re-do your zeta info but you were totally down to just respond to the wrong name forever?”

“I know… you’da… done it too.”

“You’re… not wrong, yeah. Hey, I’m still listening, Babybird, so you’re still talking. What’s your favorite part of the mountain?”

“Mm… friends?” Robin muttered, and Conner couldn’t help but smile a bit at that. It was clear to him, though, that if he didn’t get in a few questions before Barbara had the infirmary ready, he wouldn’t be able to get them in for a while. He knew the younger members of the team were still standing on the edges, looking on, and he was honestly surprised at their ability to not rush in to check on their friend. Then again, Tim was one of Conner’s best friends, too, and the confusion of the moment alone was enough to stop him in his tracks, too.

He shook it off and walked over, despite the red mask turning to him the second he took a step in their direction. Nightwing held up a placating hand before meeting Conner’s eyes and nodding. “You got him, yeah?” He said to the newcomer, and walked to meet Conner three-quarters-way. He looked oddly sheepish. “Hey. I know this probably seems weird.”

“Yeah, it does,” Conner said, trying to keep anger from his voice. He wasn’t angry, really, just confused, but he knew he had a habit of letting confusion morph into anger when it took hold of his tone and body language, two things that Dick was an expert at reading. He tried to be subtle about looking over at the newcomer, but found him staring right back at him. “Who are they?” He asked quietly.

Dick sighed, also looking back at them, before he shook his head. “I guess you were all gonna find out at some point.”

“Find out what?” He folded his arms, knowing he had snapped a bit, and also knowing that Nightwing had been with him long enough to understand.

Dick sighed again, heavier this time. “They’re my brothers.”

Conner couldn’t stop himself from stumbling back a step, eyes blowing wide. “You… your what?”

“I know, I know, it’s weird. And we probably should've told you a while ago. But it’s true.”

“‘We?’” Connor repeated dumbly. His brain must’ve been running a few minutes behind or something, because this just did not compute at all. 

Dick looked confused. “Yeah. Robin and I should’ve told you.”

More shock flitted through his veins, making him jumpy. It felt like adrenaline, for some reason, but without any reason to fight or flee. “You and Robin are brothers?!” It came out as a strained whisper-shout, which, honestly, was much better than what Dick had been expecting.

He winced. “Uh. Yeah.” He gave a nervous chuckle, fidgeting with his hands as he so often did, but never in this room. Never on a mission. Right now, he wasn’t Nightwing; this was Dick Grayson, through and through, and Conner knew it. “I-I mean, none of us are blood relatives, but like… legally, we’re related, I’ll put it that way.”

Conner sighed heavily. “Alright.” He knew better than to push at the guy’s personal life; that had always gotten him nowhere, fast. Dick would talk on his terms, and Conner had come to learn that that was okay, if sometimes annoying. But now his gaze flickered back to the masked one and hardened slightly. “Not to offend your family or anything, but that one doesn’t seem particularly safe. I’ve never heard a human make the sound he made when I walked over. And the tiny one looked ready to bite my head off.”

Dick smiled. “They can look scary, I know, but I promise they’re okay to be in here. You know I’d never bring anyone in here who I didn’t trust with my life, and these three top that list. Don’t worry, Kon. They’re just here to help.”

“About that. Robin is shot?”

“Yeah. I’m assuming you were listening the whole time, which is good, because now I don’t have to brief you.”

Conner flushed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Nightwing replied, shaking his head. “I was actually kind of counting on it. Saves us time that we’re gonna need.” He kept an eye on his brothers while he spoke, and Conner didn’t miss the way the tightness of his jaw and the crease of his brow increased with every delayed response from Tim. He didn’t look away as he spoke. “Listen, I need you to brief those four in the corner. Tell them that Robin was shot on a mission in Gotham and that the newbies are more of Batman’s proteges. That’s true, anyway. I need you not to tell them that we’re brothers, though, okay? I need to talk to everyone so that we can come up with a plan for protecting our and B’s identities. Obviously you know who he is, but they don’t, and it needs to stay that way until we talk to him. If Mal asks, tell him the same. I gotta go.” Conner nodded firmly and watched him walk quickly back to his brothers, where he immediately did an obvious mental triage of Tim. Conner turned to the others to follow what only kind of counted as their leader’s orders.


	2. What's the story?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cass gets back, Tim gets patched up and the Batfamily gets their story straight.

“Dick, he’s fading pretty fast,” Jason said, his modulated voice tinged with worry as he watched his little brother’s shoulders stuttering with every breath. “What’s taking them so long? It’s just the infirmary.”

Dick was about to reply when he heard a beeping at the control console, followed by Mal saying, “Uh, Wing? Someone’s trying to come through one of the Gotham zeta entrances. Retinal scan says it requires authorization.” 

Jason nodded at him, and he quickly went to the console and let his fingers fly across the keyboard with the practiced finesse of a hacker who had been in a few too many jams. The robotic voice vaguely registered as saying, “Unrecognized; override Nightwing, B-0-1,” before another figure materialized inside the tube, reconstructing much faster this time to reveal a petite girl with short black hair and a hood over her head. She was covered in blood. Dick, near the tube, wrinkled his nose at the smell. It was overpowering enough to make him forget where he was, and the casual question was out of his mouth before he could remember that most people didn’t operate like they did. “How much of that is yours?” Dick barely resisted the urge to groan at the size of his own mouth, and a second later at the size of Jason’s, because that grin was way too gleeful.

The girl smiled without teeth and just shook her head. 

Tim managed to lift his head from his brother’s shoulder enough to look in her general direction, and immediately her smile was replaced by an openly worried and sympathetic expression. “Little brother,” she said, and she was at their side before anybody had seen her move, cupping Tim’s face and rubbing her thumb over his cheekbone. He gave her a look that she seemed to understand, because she said, “Did not kill. Promise.” Tim smiled and mumbled a thank you before letting his head fall back to where it had been. 

Jason’s eyes flashed. “Then is that yours?” He nodded to her bloodsoaked gear.

She shook her head, instantly placating her brother with that same gentle smile. “Broke noses.” Jason relaxed and nodded.

Just as Nightwing reached them and had taken a moment to rest his hand on her shoulder in greeting, his comm fuzzed to life in his ear. “We’re ready here.”

“Good,” He replied, motioning with his head for his companions to follow him, which they immediately did, falling into step behind Dick at a sprint. “Cass, get cleaned up down that way and meet us back here,” He said, gesturing down another hallway, as they reached the infirmary, where Barbara and Damian were waiting with two beds and an operating table fully equipped and all the necessary tools and medicines in their proper, accessible places. Dick would thank Barbara later for her impeccable organization, but right now he was busy helping Jason keep Tim steady as he lifted him from his back and laid him down on the table. Instantly, the entire group was in what could only be described as Batmode, dead serious and calm and able to have entire conversations without speaking. Dick went straight to the sink and washed his hands up to his elbows, trying to mentally ready himself for any gruesome operation he might have to perform on his little brother. Of course it would be the best medic out of the lot of them that ended up injured when Alfred wasn’t around. That’s some Batfamily luck, right there.

“How many do you need?” Jason asked from where he stood far away from the table, giving the two of them space to work. He had one hand on Damian’s shoulder, who wasn’t even pushing it away, and the other around Cassie’s back as she suddenly reappeared in her somehow immaculate uniform and leaned her head on his shoulder.

Barbara took stock and shook her head. “Two is good for now, but I’m gonna need you on deck just in case, Jay. Damian, close the blinds. We’re gonna need masks off for this.”

The boy obliged, turning the blackout blinds shut and watching as the waiting room behind them disappeared, but not before noticing two kids -- Blue Beetle and Impulse, his brain supplied -- standing at one end, fidgeting. He elected to ignore them and huffed one of his scoff-laughs. “What an excellent family bonding activity this is. Pennyworth will be proud.”

They all let out surprised laughs, even Tim, who was somehow still conscious. Quickly, Barbara shook her head and settled. “You two, outside,” she said to Cassie and Damian, who obeyed straight away. “Jason, on deck.” She paused to peel off Tim’s domino. “Current status, Timmy?” 

Tim, blinking glassy blue eyes, nodded stiffly. “Just knock me out.”

An oxygen mask, an IV, and a sedative later, she had obliged, and she and Dick set to work disinfecting, stitching and bandaging the wounds. Normally, they wouldn’t have even needed to knock him out, but the fact of the bullet’s trajectory along his ribs and of there being both an entry and exit wound meant more danger and more disinfecting. That was really the problem; Tim had no spleen, as they all knew very well, which was why they needed them all here right now. He was far more susceptible to infection than the rest of them to begin with, so of course it was him that got hit by a dirty, musket-ball-lookin-ass bullet from a gun that nobody has used in a hundred years. But it was just like Harvey to have something like that, over-proud asshole that he was. Not that any of them could really talk, coming from the Wayne manor, but y’know. 

The point was that a dirty bullet from an old gun was exactly the kind of thing they all tried to keep far the hell away from Tim, but regardless of the actual circumstance they had all learned exactly how to care for him whenever his shitty immune system made things a problem. Granted, the majority of the time Tim could probably take care of it himself, but that didn’t mean Dick and Bruce weren’t gonna hover like the stupid mother hens they were, and it didn’t mean that Jason wasn’t gonna be spending most of his time sitting somewhere in the room like it wasn’t a big deal, and it didn’t mean that Damian wasn’t gonna be hiding in the air vents watching over him and pretending that he didn’t care, and it didn’t mean that Barbara and Cass weren’t gonna bake cookies or sit and watch movies or practice sign language with him. God, the girls were so much less emotionally constipated. Dick made a mental note to ask Black Canary for therapist recommendations. 

Once Tim had been fully patched up and stabilized, they transferred him to one of the beds and reset a new IV and a heart rate monitor, just in case. Dick and Barbara both knew they were gonna have a lot of questions to answer, and they also knew, as much as it pained Dick to leave Tim alone right now, that they were the only ones capable of answering those questions. Cass was out because it would be too much talking for her, Tim was out because he was, well, out, Jason was out because if he took off his helmet someone might realize who he is, and Damian was out because he was Damian. And that left Dick and Barbara, who finished washing up after treating Tim and quickly called a meeting with Jason, not wanting to risk people getting too curious if they called the other two inside. They sat in various places around Tim’s bed: Dick on the nightstand, Jason by his head, Barbara by his feet. 

“So what’s the story gonna be, Dickiebird?” Jason asked the second they sat down, pushing Tim’s shaggy bangs back from his eyes. Kid needed a haircut. Bad.

Dick didn’t beat around the bush. “Yeah. No idea. I was gonna ask you guys for ideas. How the hell are we gonna tell them we’re siblings without exposing B? Or, hell, the fact that you’re alive?” He gestured to Jason with a nod.

“Why can’t we just tell them that we’re all Batman’s proteges or whatever, and that makes us, like, pseudo-family? Blood of the covenant and all that. Like a telenovela. It’ll be dramatic, which is perfect for us,” Jason said. 

Barbara’s lips scrunched up a bit, the way they always did when she was thinking. “I don’t know. One of them is bound to recognize your helmet, Jay. I’d be shocked if Gar hasn’t already. He studies… that kind of thing.”

Jason scoffed. “You mean he studies villains?”

“And heroes,” Dick added. “We’d be more concerned if he had a big love for villains. But yeah, he’ll recognize you as the Red Hood. He’ll probably wanna know why Batman is harboring a ‘criminal’.” He held up air quotes, but suddenly dropped them and looked more alert.. “Oh, shit, La'gaan will recognize you, too. But I guess it’ll take him some digging. He likes to find reasons to pick fights with us.”

“With anyone,” Barbara amended.

“And if I take the helmet off, they'll know I was Robin even with the domino under it,” Jason said, bringing his elbows to his knees and his chin to his hands. He turned his eyes to Dick. “Is there any way through this where they don’t find out that I’m alive?”

“Not one where they both don’t think we’re harboring a criminal and don’t know that you’re alive,” Dick replied quietly.

Barbara sighed. “So we pick between those.”

“Looks like it.”

All three — four, including Tim — were quiet for a while. They all knew what had to be done. If they allowed Young Justice, and, by extension, the League, to think that the Bats were harboring a criminal, Batman’s credibility would drop way down, maybe even to the point of him not having the trust of the League anymore. If that happened, it wouldn’t be long before they were all unmasked, and all the criminals in Gotham would have targets on their civilian backs in no time flat. They didn’t have a choice; they couldn’t let it come to that.

“Alright then,” Jason finally muttered. He looked up at his older brother, the person he had always butted heads with and always trusted with his life and his thoughts, and at Barbara, their oldest friend and confidant, a sister to him just the same. “Jason Todd is coming back from the dead.”

They both nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry, Jay,” Dick said quietly, but Jason shook his head, looking at Tim’s closed eyes.

“Nah. It’s worth it.”

“Anything would be,” Barbara mumbled, more to herself, but Dick caught it anyway and had to say he agreed. He would do anything for his brothers, for any of them, but all of them were definitely just a little extra protective of Timmy. Tim was just so good; so purely and completely good and he didn’t deserve the hand life had dealt him. Obviously none of them liked the circumstances that had brought them together, but Tim… he hadn’t experienced love until he was almost a teenager. When he was first with them as a kid, he had been so touch-starved that a handshake felt too intimate, that he wouldn’t stand within a foot of someone for fear of being rude. Bruce was a wreck that first year before Jason came back, and Tim nearly single-handedly kept him from going too far, all the time thinking of himself as a begrudging colleague who needed to work harder instead of as a son. And Bruce was so emotionally constipated that he didn’t know Tim felt like that, and Dick was trying but too confused by Tim’s apprehension to touch to take things slowly like he needed, and Barbara lived with her father, and Cass spent most of that year in Hong Kong, Damian hadn’t come along yet, and Jason was dead, and Tim thought he was just his replacement in a time of absence. And they let him think that because they were all too wrapped up in their own guilt to pay attention to what was right in front of them. They actually let him think that, this gentle and compassionate child who was only born to be an heir and only educated to be an heir with half a brain. Of course, Tim had the mental bandwidth to span about thirty brains, but that was just another thing about him: determination to learn and grow. Which was probably what allowed him to adapt to all the new shit his life kept throwing at him, even when his (piece of shit, in Dick’s humble opinion) parents died. And all those times Jason, suddenly alive somehow, had tried to kill him. And Dick giving Robin to Damian. And the concept of Damian in general. And now he had no fucking spleen. Christ.

“So, then…” Jason looked at them expectantly, pulling Dick from his thoughts. 

“What?”

“Are we gonna do this, like, the Bat way, or the normal person way?”

“You mean are we gonna turn it into a weird joke when we talk about it because none of you are capable of expressing human emotions?” Barbara asked.

“I mean exactly that, yes.”

“We’ll ask B. Because we are not doing this without telling him first, Jay, I don’t care what you’re about to say. Like it or not, you were his Robin when you were on this team, and his identity is on the line here, too.” Dick pinched the bridge of his nose as he spoke.

Jason folded just arms and pouted. “He’s not gonna let us do this.”

“He doesn’t really have a choice,” came a familiar voice from the doorway, and all three of them groaned. Impeccable timing, as always. Batman, followed by Damian and Cass, walked over to the table, double checked the blinds, and pulled his cowl off to reveal Bruce Wayne and his perpetually furrowed eyebrows. Although they were very slightly more furrowed than usual right then as he looked at Tim, which the kids accurately read as worried. Slowly, he let his Batman face (technical term) slip back into his Bruce Wayne face (technical term), and before long the man looking at them was no longer the Dark Knight, the hero Gotham deserves, and nor was he the incredibly wealthy son of and heir to Thomas and Martha Wayne; rather, he was a regular dude, their father or mentor or both, just a dad worried about his son. He sat opposite Jason on the other side of Tim’s head and stroked his hair exactly the way Dick had, exactly the way they all did when one of them was injured or ill, because it was what they had grown up comforted by. Because, again, Bruce was their dad. And the kids knew it was a bad idea to bring their dead brother back to life without first running it by their dad.

“How the hell did you get here?” Jason asked.

“I called and briefed him while Damian prepped the infirmary,” Barbara answered for him, and Dick and Jason immediately gave each other knowing looks of confirmation.

“Thaaaaat’s why it took so long,” they said in unison.

“Wait,” Jason crowed, “so you are gonna let us do this?”

Bruce grumbled something that they didn’t hear before shaking his head. “Yeah, I guess I am. You were right to bring Tim here and I’m assuming you genius detectives worked out that it’s a bad idea to let the League think we’ve got a criminal in the bunch. For the record,” he said pointedly to Jason, “you’re not a criminal, but even if you were still a criminal, we would always take care of you and welcome you home with open arms because you’re you. But the League doesn’t need to know that.”

“So they do have reason to mistrust Batman, but we don’t want them to think they have reason to mistrust Batman,” Barbara surmised.

Bruce gave a rueful smile. “That about covers it.”

“Really tell… Jay alive?” Cass asked with an incredulous tilt to her voice. She shook her head quickly. “Bad idea.”

“I concur,” Damian said with folded arms. “I see no reason we cannot simply smuggle Todd out via stealth and act as if he were never here.”

Dick did a genuine double-take. “You want to just pretend he wasn’t even here? Th-there’s no way that’ll work, not with these guys.”

Barbara nodded, pushing down a smile at the absurdity of the suggestion because she knew it would piss the kid off. “Garfield would probably cover for us, but La’gaan wouldn’t, and they’re the two that are most likely to remember his helmet with specificity.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that everyone who saw you all will notice that we’re one short, but of the people who are most likely to remember exactly what the missing person looked like, only one will trust us enough to cover it,” Barbara finished, rolling her eyes. “The point is, we’re not doing that. Next.”

“There isn’t a next,” Jason said. “I’m gonna tell them I’m alive.”

They all fell quiet again, Damian included, which surprised Dick to say the least. So they were really gonna do this, then. It was really all they could do, Dick supposed, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Jason was right, though: it was more than worth it if it meant making sure Tim was safe. And he knew they were totally gonna do this the Bat way.

~


	3. Surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red Hood is Jason, Tim is awake, everyone is confused.

In the end, they left Damian and Bruce in charge of Tim and decided they could get away with pretending that Batman had magically escaped. For the record, the reasoning behind that decision, courtesy of Barbara, was that every hero in the world that had seen Batman at some point had also failed to see Batman at some point. Turning around and suddenly not having 230 pounds of brooding behind you was an incredibly common occurrence, and nobody would question it if the kids just said he was long gone when someone asked. Damian, of course, both pouted about not being able to help explain and seemed relieved at not having to deal with people. His pouty expression and his relieved expression were, of course, identical, but that was just Damian. Again. 

With masks back on, Nightwing, Batgirl, Orphan, and Red Hood exited the infirmary and were immediately met with nearly the entirety of Young Justice. At the front of the group stood La’gaan, balled hands on his hips and chest puffed out proudly, a poorly-hidden smirk covering his face. “Start talking,” he ground out, going for his best impression of Batman and missing by a couple octaves. 

“Oh my god…” said Cassie — Wondergirl, not Orphan — from well behind him, eyes wide. “He was telling the truth… it really is the Red Hood…” Her face folded into anger and she met Nightwing’s eyes. “You let that villain near Tim?!”

Jason shook his head in surprise. “You… why do they know his name?” He asked in that quiet-but-sharp hiss of his that always made Dick picture him getting busted for goofy hijinks in a sitcom. Except that he was, y’know, an incredibly dangerous and mildly murderous vigilante who could shoot a coin in the air at a hundred feet and made grizzled drug cartel thugs piss themselves at the mere mention of his name. Except for that.

“Thank him,” Dick replied, gesturing flippantly to Impulse, who grinned sheepishly (do sheep look any kind of way? Dick didn’t know) and shrugged.

“Who is this Red Hood, exactly?” Bart asked, tone light as always.

“Did you listen?” La’gaan said to him angrily before turning and pointing sharply at Jason. “He is a criminal, a dangerous killer assassin! And the Bats are harboring him!”

“Both a killer and an assassin, huh?” Jason said. “Well, one of those I could agree with, but both seems excessive.”

“I love that you’re antagonizing the exact person we’re trying to help you with,” Dick said back, brows drawn.

“Explain yourselves!” Cassie hollered, because that was her interpretation of speaking sternly. 

They didn’t. Instead, Jason simply sighed, reached up, and disengaged his helmet. La’gaan took up a fighting stance. Jason pulled off the Red Hood.

Silence.

Thick, choking, pin-drop silence.

Now, don’t get Dick wrong: he’s experienced true, complete silence before, albeit in brief increments. But he wasn’t prepared for this kind of silence, for this oppressive blanket drowning out the entire world and narrowing it to this moment. This was a mistake. He never should’ve let them do this, there was no way they’d be able to talk their way out of this one, this was completely outrageous—

No, he had to calm down. They’d had to do this to save Tim. Right. If Tim is safe, the silence doesn’t matter.

And Tim was safe.

The silence slammed to a halt.

“Surprise?” Jason said, trying to sound nonchalant but ending up with a pitchy mumble. Rather chalant, in Dick’s opinion.

So they were definitely doing this the Bat way.

“Nightwing, we… I thought we said no faking anybody else’s deaths?” Garfield mumbled at length.

“You faked someone’s death?” Jason whispered sharply.

“Tell you later,” he hissed back. He raised his voice to normal volume and gave starting this his best shot. “No, Gar, we didn’t fake his death. Hood— or, you knew him as the second Robin— did actually die. Ra’s al Ghul stole his body from us after his death and resurrected him using the Lazarus Pit. If you’re familiar with it, you may know that the Lazarus Pit gives complete amnesia to those who use it until something triggers their memories to return, and it can imbue the recipient with a kind of psychosis or madness as well. Hood was forced to…” he swallowed hard and clenched his teeth, feeling familiar anger and despair welling up within him. God, he hated the thought of it all, of his little brother beaten and dying on the floor of an exploding warehouse, of him forced into fighting for one of their greatest enemies, of him not remembering their family when they first realized he was alive. Jason had his arms folded and was staring hard at the floor, but when Dick paused he turned his head slightly towards him and took a half-step closer to his side. It wasn’t much, but it was what he could give right then, and that was enough. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Without his memories, he was fed false information about all the Bats and forced to become a member of Ra’s League of Assassins. Ra’s had complete control over him.” He shivered involuntarily. Jason took another half-step closer. “When we finally realized he was alive and busted him free from Ra’s control, the Pit Madness took over.” He looked pointedly at La’gaan, who shied back slightly. Good. “With nothing controlling the Pit Madness anymore, it was unleashed in full, and he became the so-called killer assassin of Gotham of whom you speak. About a year ago, we were finally able to put all the right steps in place — many courtesy of Zatanna — to completely cure him of the Pit Madness, and it worked.” He sighed heavily and straightened his back. “The guy in front of you is a person many of you knew very well and whose death you mourned. None of this was his fault; he was a victim of the Light, just like many of you have been. We didn’t give up on those of you who were, and we didn’t give up on him.” He tweaked his head to the side. “Does that explanation cover everything for you?”

Silence filled the space again, but this time it was different, less suffocating but just as heavy. Thoughtful, Dick decided. Or confused. Same thing in this mountain.

Finally, Conner took a half-step forward. His eyes were wider than Dick had ever seen them in all their years of being friends. “J… Jason?”

Instinctively, Jason turned his head at the sound of his name, and even after he realized he was moving, he met Conner’s eyes with only minor apprehension. “Hey, Kon.”

Everything snapped into chaos. In an instant, Conner was front and center, wrapping Jason in a full-strength hug that looked like it was about to make his head pop. Everyone else who had known him rushed forward on his heels, clamoring to look Jay in the eyes, feel his pulse, make sure he was really there with them again. That this second chance wasn’t a sick dream. Shockingly, Jason allowed himself to be hugged and stared at and manhandled, holding a softness in his eyes that even Tim rarely saw, despite Jason being so protective of him.

Of course, speak of the devil.

The door to the infirmary suddenly flew open and slammed into the opposite wall, quieting the crowd significantly, and out shuffled Tim, barefoot and shirtless, bandages covering the right side of his chest and torso and a look of partially-drugged fury in his unmasked eyes. 

“Tim!” Dick yelped in surprise, immediately turning to face him, but Tim moved first, stepping straight into Jason’s space and fuming, effectively forcing the crowd back a few feet without ever touching them.

“You idiot!” He ground out, feeling something mysteriously prick at his eyes. He ignored it and let out a growl that sounded way too much like Jason for anyone’s comfort. Tim’s teeth were bared. “What are you thinking? You… I can’t believe…” he shouted some wordless noise, righteous anger and frustration, and felt tears begin to slip past his defenses and glide down his face. He scrubbed them away angrily, but not before Jason could see. His brother was just too damn perceptive sometimes, given how shitty of an empathizer he was.

Jason’s eyes widened and he took a careful step forward; he held his hands upright like he was soothing a cornered animal. “Hey, woah, Timmy. You shouldn’t be out of bed right now. What’s going on?” 

Dick sent a glare at Damian, who had appeared with his arms folded in the doorway. “You were on Tim duty!” He heard Barbara hiss.

The kid just shrugged one shoulder. “Tt. You are aware that Drake is an escapist, correct, Gordon? While he is an inferior Robin, there is nobody better at going unnoticed.”

Dick raised an eyebrow. “He hacked something and got you to get up and run to the door.” It wasn’t a question. They all knew it. Damian’s silence (followed by a tt) only confirmed it. They all groaned heavily and Cass pinched the bridge of her nose. Hard.

Tim whirled on Dick. “Shut up! Ignore that! Why would you let him do this?!”

“Tim, what were we supposed to do? Treat you in the cave without good antibiotics and let you die from an infection?” Dick asked, trying and failing to keep the exasperation from his voice.

Tim’s brows drew together and his eyes narrowed. He spoke through clenched teeth. “You don’t know that I would’ve gotten an infection.”

Damian scoffed. “Of course you would have, Drake. Your lack of proper organs makes you a weakling.”

Tim ignored him. “You could’ve at least waited until I woke up and asked me!”

“You aren’t even supposed to be awake! Or standing!” Dick crowed. 

“Yeah, wait, what? How are… we sedated you. You asked us to. You should’ve been out for a few hours at least. It’s been like thirty minutes since they finished patching you up,” Jason said, reasoning aloud to himself. He tilted his head back and groaned. “Jesus, what are you psychos made of?”

“Robins,” his brothers reminded him sharply, and he threw his hands in the air with another groan.

“Whatever!” Tim said. His face was dry but his eyes were still red and cloudy. He poked a finger at Jason. “We don’t give up secret IDs. Doesn’t matter why, you don’t do that shit! And now everyone knows you’re alive, and he-” he poked his same finger at La’gaan, who turned startled eyes his way, “-definitely still thinks you’re an assassin or a killer or whatever-”

“Killer assassin,” Cass corrected, and Dick elbowed her in the ribs even as he sealed his lips around a laugh. 

“-and now we can’t separate the Red Hood from Jason Todd ever again because everyone in this room knows! They only know who Dick and I are by a fluke! Two of us living in the same place is a coincidence, and now someone sees you coming home and goes oh, I know who Robin is now, and let me do some looking, and oh, cool, so-and-so must be Batman. You’re such an idiot!”

“Do you two imbeciles make a habit of passing out your secrets to everyone you see?” Damian snapped at Dick and Tim. “Why are these fools aware you live together?”

“Not our fault; we’ll tell you later,” Dick sighed. He noticed that his siblings had gradually shifted into the closed-off semicircle that they had a tendency to stand in when they had conversations that required them to stand. Otherwise, they would lie in a heap or sit way too many people in a single chair, or they’d be running across rooftops in bird- and bat-themed costumes beating up bad guys. As your standard family does.

Jason didn’t blink and threw out an “Add it to the list,” before turning to Tim again. “Shit, Timmers. Look, I’m sorry we didn’t ask you first and I’m sorry this whole thing upset you, but you’re definitely smart enough to work out for yourself that this was our only option. You know that it was.”

Tim hesitated, and in that time Cass laid her hand on his shoulder and met his eyes with a nod. “This or criminal.” Tim understood, but before he could reply, she held up a silencing hand and spoke again. “Our brother. More important than secret.” 

Tim sighed and deflated, letting his head drop slightly. Cass laced their fingers together, and Tim allowed her to, even squeezing her hand in return. “I… I know. And… I know I would… probably do the same,” he relented with a huff. He glanced tentatively at Cass, and she gave him an encouraging smile, which he did his best to match. He made the sign for thank you and she just nodded. 

“Sister knows best,” Jason snorted, lightly punching the shoulder on Tim’s uninjured side. It was closer to a tiny brush of his knuckles, clearly concerned about causing him further pain, and Tim scoffed.

“Dami, call Jason a weakling, please. His punch was abysmal.”

Damian turned his nose up a bit farther than usual. “I take no orders from you, Drake.” His gaze shifted over casually, though, and he raised an eyebrow. “Although it is true that Todd is, in fact, a weakling.”

“Perfect, thank you,” Tim replied pleasantly. 

Jason grumbled, but Dick raised an eyebrow. “No, I think that’s warranted. I understand pulling your punch and everything, but the form was pretty inexcusable.” 

“Is that what we’re talking about now?” Jason said. “We’re talking about my Tim Punch form? That’s what we’re talking about?”

“Hey, great that you guys are family bonding right now, but can we maybe put Tim back to bed? Cuz he does actually have a bullet hole in his side. Remember that? The bullet hole?” Barbara deadpanned.

“Bullet hole means sleep,” Cass acquiesced. 

“For you, it also means your favorite thing!” Dick said, grinning that blinding, toothy, Dick Grayson grin that he reserved for when he was about to say the dumbest thing ever. Or at least the dumbest thing until the next thing he said. Barbara gasped, her eyes lighting up. Why was she in on this?

Oh, right, she was practically a doctor. Plus, she took a morbid fascination in watching the horror that always followed the taking of the antibiotics: the eating of the probiotics. Tim shuddered just thinking about the slimy goop that would soon be sliding down his throat.

“You really don’t have to say it,” Tim groaned.

“Antibiotics!” Barbara, Dick and Jason cheered in unison. Of course, the only time Jason would let himself be as cheery as Dick was when it was for the express purpose of mocking Tim.

“What if I just don’t this time?” Tim muttered, beginning to sidle behind Cass. Damian moved so as not to allow him any undue extra cover. 

“Alternatively,” Jason said, voice upbeat and annoying as hell, “you could survive this injury! How about that?”

“Plus, you wouldn’t want to skip out on your real favorite part, right, Timmers?” Barbara tried to contain an oncoming giggle fit.

His eyes widened. “Don’t you dare--”

“Yogurt!” The three of them cried again, and Dick’s feet literally bounced a few inches into the air in his excitement.

Tim let out another groan, this one throaty and grating. “I am not going to eat your goddamn fucking snail slime! That shit is nasty and I know you only make me eat it to suffer! There are a million other probiotics out there that don’t feel like swallowing thirty slugs! Why can’t I get one of those?!”

“What, you want us to let you drink kombucha? Please,” Jason scoffed. “We deal with enough dangerous shit on the daily; we don’t need to worry about you being bacteria-drink-brainwashed into a health freak.”

“Wait, but kombucha is so good though…” Dick whined quietly.

“Todd, the bacteria drink got him,” Damian hissed. 

Jason gasped, scandalized, and threw a theatrical arm in front of Cass, Damian and Tim. “Stay behind me, it’s not safe,” he stage-whispered. Tim’s head fell forward in despair and he let his forehead rest against Jason’s shoulder. All the poor kid wanted was to not be forced to eat yogurt. Was that too much to ask? Was it? Was it really?

“I hate you guys,” He muttered.

Jason grinned, and though Tim couldn’t see his face, he had put up with his brother’s bullshit long enough to know. “Love you, too, Timmers.”

“Guys? Bullet hole? Remember?” Barbara said weakly. Why didn’t she get paid to do all this babysitting?

Dick finally nodded and began settling people down. “Alright, alright. Babs is right. Tim, back to bed. Cass, you’re on Tim duty.”

“What?” Tim yelped. “Is that how little you trust me?”

“You got up once, didn’t you?” Dick said, trying to hide a shit-eating grin. “This way we know for sure you won’t get up again.”

“This seems like overkill!” Tim’s voice was pitchy and nervous as Cass took his arm and led him back into the infirmary with a smile.

“Don’t get up, no problems,” She promised cheerily. Tim gulped. They disappeared through the door.

A moment of silence passed. “Alright then,” Dick mumbled, turning back and remembering the frozen members of Young Justice. “Uh. You probably have more questions.”

~


	4. The Robin Exposition Bazaar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did you want to hear everyone's stories in unnecessary length and detail? Too bad, you're gonna hear everyone's stories in unnecessary length and detail.

“The hell do you mean 'more questions'?” Conner said, perhaps a bit more harshly than he had intended, but Dick would probably account for that. “If I had more questions, that would mean I had answers to my original ones.” He folded his arms. “And I don’t.”

“That’s fair,” Jason muttered. 

“Tt. What right does this plebeian have to question us? He knows nothing! I will not hear his nonsense.”

“What, do you want him to, like, give you an access code? Or, like, a fastpass?” Jason looked over. “Hey, Kon, you got a fastpass?”

“A what?”

Jason looked seriously back to Damian. “Hmm. Looks like you’ll just have to hear his nonsense, Little D.”

“Destroying him is also an option.”

“Oh, joy.”

“I should’ve let Tim stay awake,” Dick muttered. He could feel the beginnings of a headache start to pinch at his temples. 'Oh, joy' was right.

“Preposterous. The fool would have collapsed had we not intervened.”

“Oh, was it a ‘we’ thing, now?” Dick challenged. Though challenging Damian over squabbles was not his usual way, sometimes the meager amount of grown-up in him liked to take well-deserved naps and some things would... slip his mind. Yeah, that's what it was.

“Boys,” Barbara finally said, her voice firm and commanding. They straightened, looking around abashedly, although probably not abashedly enough, if Dick was honest. Which he was gonna need to be, at least partially, if he wanted to explain all this.

“Right. Right,” he sighed. He leveled an open gaze at the group, generally focusing on Conner. “We’re all ears.”

“Isn’t the problem that we want you to be all mouths?” Jaime’s left eyebrow was drawn tightly while the right one was practically in his hairline. If Dick didn’t know him so well, know that his face really was just that fluid and that expressive, he would’ve thought the kid was acting. Perks of knowing, he guessed. Jaime paused and glanced slightly over his shoulder as if listening to someone behind him, but there was nobody there, which was likely why Dick could feel Damian staring hard at the poor kid. Jaime frowned. “What does that even mean? You’re terrible at metaphors, hermano.”

Damian tensed and snapped into a fighting stance. “Grayson, your subordinate has gone mad. We must restrain him before he does any damage.”

Dick heaved a tree sigh. “Stand down, Robin.” 

“Robin?” Jaime repeated, voice tinged with confusion and laughter as if Dick had made a mistake. 

Well, that was as good a starting point as any. Dick smiled sheepishly and motioned for the Team to come closer, which they hesitantly did, fanning out a bit in a group. The awkward three-foot gap dividing the Bats from the Team was gone; there was no going back now.

“Alright,” Dick began. He cracked his knuckles for effect and saw Jason roll his eyes behind his domino. Damian huffed and he heard Barbara heave a long-suffering sigh, which, honestly, was fair. Dick made wide, swooping gestures with his arms that ended pointing at himself. “Dick Grayson. Robin one. The OG. The acrobat. The witty comedic genius. Born in the circus and raised on the trapeze.” Jason snorted loudly and Dick ignored him. He steeled himself for what he was about to say, but he knew he had to say it light-heartedly, or else everything would shut down: himself, his brothers, his friends, and this conversation alike. “Parents are murdered during a performance. One of the audience members is a toddler named Tim; we’ll get back to him later.” Cassie — again, Wondergirl, not Orphan, who seemed to be doing her job quite well thus far, considering the lack of that former toddler named Tim — gasped quietly and covered the sound with a hand to her mouth. Dick pressed on. “Bruce Wayne, the Gotham billionaire, also happens to be in the audience. He's like 'wow, bet that kid has nowhere to go. I'll adopt him'. Dick Grayson gets adopted. Not long later, because Gotham is insane, Dick gets into some trouble and gets rescued by Batman. Batman realizes he’s a badass acrobat and becomes his mentor. Dick creates Robin. Rad. Okay!” He clapped his hands together and made more dramatic hand gestures. 

This time, they landed on Jason. “Jason Todd. Robin Two. The fighter. The best friend. The edgelord, which kinda makes him a cooler Robin, as much as I hate to admit it.” Jason snickered. “A Crime Alley street rat until the age of 10. Parents are absent or high or in jail, who knows. Caught trying to-” he glared pointedly but playfully at Jason, “-steal the fucking tires off the Batmobile.” Jason looked distinctly fond. Dick would laugh with him later. “Batman is like ‘holy shit except I don’t curse around children, this kid has guts’. We bring him back to the Batcave. He has no place to stay; I bring him back to my dad to see if he can stay with us, and soon enough, he gets adopted. We are now brothers. Update to the timeline! He stays in touch with Batman. When I get fired, Batman chooses him to be Robin.”

“You got fired?” M’gann gasped. “I always thought you just decided to, I dunno, move on!”

Dick waved her off, trying to ignore the residual pain of the memory he’s long since worked through. “I got fired for a dumb reason; by the time we figured it out, Jay was already Robin. It didn’t make sense to take it from him.” He shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant but honestly feeling pretty chalant right about now. He had to move on. “Anyway.” He resumed his lighthearted tone and funny gestures for some of the most painful events of their lives. He knew his brothers probably disapproved of exactly how honest he was being, seeing as really all he was changing was making it seem like their father and Batman weren’t the same person. Still, he knew they trusted his decisions, and he had to admit it felt kind of good to have people know things about his life, for once. He sent a meaningful glance at Jason, who set his jaw and nodded. “Jason is Robin for about a year when he ends up being…uh. Killed. By the Joker.” Jason’s jaw clenched tighter. Eyes widened across the room, but, Dick noted gratefully, nobody spoke. He silently edged his foot over to sit against his brother’s, who pushed back slightly, and Dick correctly took that to mean ‘I’m okay’. Dick nodded almost imperceptibly and, again, pressed on. No going back. Right. “So he’s dead for about two years, a little more, and then the whole thing happens with the Lazarus Pit that I already told you about. In the meantime!” 

Dick twisted around and swung his arms again to gesture at the door of the infirmary. “Tim Drake. Robin Three. The gentle genius. The coffee addict. The world’s second-greatest detective.” He glared at the door as if it were actually Tim. “Currently, the spleenless idiot who likes to get out of bed with a bullet hole in his side.”

“S-… Uh, spleenless?” Bart muttered, almost to himself, but Dick cringed nonetheless. 

“Uh. Yeah. No spleen for Tim. Long story. Anyway,” he said quickly, but he couldn’t keep himself from grinning as he watched Barbara’s eyes suddenly light up; she must’ve just remembered it would be yogurt time soon. “So, Tim, right? Born to Gotham socialites Jack and Janet Drake, next-door neighbors of Bruce Wayne and, by extension, Jason and I. While Jack and Janet are definitely wealthy, they aren’t exactly… caring.” His face darkened and he watched his fellow Bats as they hid their rage in their own ways. Jason, of course, didn’t really hide his except to turn his face towards the ground, which Dick was glad for, because by god, was Jason fucking pissed. Granted, Jason was often pissed, but when it came to Tim’s parents, nobody, not even Bruce, was angrier. Maybe it was because he had been trying to kill Tim around the same time as his parents were at the end of their rope, and had therefore done the opposite of helping. He was heartbroken when he found out. Dick shook himself. He would keep going; he could feel his chest getting lighter as he did. “Anyway, Tim is a goddamn genius. Turns out that he had figured out the identities of Batman and Robin at the age of nine-” shocked hums echoed around the group, “-because he had been at my final circus performance when he was three and had seen Robin perform a specific flip that he knew only Dick Grayson could do. My bad. He figures us out while I am still Robin, and he starts following the Bats around on night patrols by the time Jason is Robin without anyone noticing, somehow. When Jason is… gone… Batman and I collectively go kinda wack. You guys remember, I’m sure.” He nodded at M’gann and Connor, the only assembled members of his original team. Solemnly, they nodded back. “Tim realizes that Batman needs a Robin to keep him from going too wack. He walks straight into the Batcave, which he has also found, and tells the literal Batman that he should take Tim on as Robin. With a ton of bitching and moaning, Batman does that. He’s a total jackass for a while, as am I, but we finally get over ourselves and start being half-decent people and moderate-to-severe mentors. The entire time he’s busy moonlighting as a bird-based superhero, Tim’s parents don’t notice a thing about it or us. Us Bats, though, start noticing things about- about them. Um.” He glanced with uncertainty between his siblings. Jason still had his face turned towards the floor, and Damian was fighting to keep his expression carefully blank, but Dick could see the telltale signs of tension in the slight crinkle around his eyes and in his barely pressed lips. Dick ground his teeth, allowing himself this moment of rage, before he sighed heavily. “They weren’t good people,” he continued. “And eventually Batman and I realize just how bad they are, and we bust Tim out of there that same night. And, well, at that point my dad had gotten pretty good at picking up strays...” he grinned at Jason, who gave him a knowing smirk, “...so we take him in. Bruce becomes his guardian, legally, so he’s officially a part of the family. Another update to the timeline! Then,” Dick twists again, back to Jason. “Jason comes back, which is awesome, and he’s full of Pit Madness, which is less awesome, and some shit goes down, but y’know what, we’re past that now so it’s irrelevant! And then things get even weirder.” The group managed a polite cringe. Dick appreciated that.

Dick danced back around to the door that he was kind of already gesturing at, but he had used his hands so much during his explanation that he had turned almost 180 degrees. “Cassandra Cain. The psychological empath. The badass. The actual angel child. Born in complete seclusion and prevented, by her father, from doing anything except training to become the world’s greatest assassin and the ultimate bodyguard for Ra’s al Ghul. Not taught to read or write spoken language, but rather to be a perfect reader of body language, to an extent that I literally cannot explain. It’s insane. Like… insaaaane. Anyway. At age eight, she runs away from her father after some shit goes down, and then we have no fucking idea who or where she is for like six years, but it be like that sometimes. When she shows up in Gotham, all the Bats are out kicking ass as we do because the city is going to shit again, and then she comes out of nowhere and saves the police Commissioner’s life.”

“My dad,” Barbara added helpfully, and she got a few looks that definitely said ‘how the hell do you fit into this?’ She decided she would deal with that whenever Dick was done doing… this.

Dick nodded deeply, grinning. “And of course Batman works with the Commissioner, and so do all of us, so we definitely notice this newcomer, and we immediately find out that she kicks ass like nothing we’ve ever seen because she takes us all down, Batman included, in thirty seconds. So we love her, of course. And then slowly, we get to know her and find out that, surprise suprise, she has no place to stay. So she actually stays with Barbara for a while because we aren’t sure what kind of environment she’ll prefer given her inability to speak, but eventually we all get really close under Batman and she decides to come live with us at the Manor. Tim gets his sights set on helping her learn to communicate in whatever way she most wants to do that, so he teaches her to read and then to put words to sounds and then to write, and eventually they learn sign language together and then teach it to all of us, and it’s like a wholesome family bonding thing. And a few years down the line here, she’s learned so much so fast that she’s actually at the point of learning to speak right now, though they’re taking that a lot slower cuz it’s less important now that we can all sign. And then we get… this one!”

Again, Dick swivels like a damn office chair and points his flailing arms in Damian’s general direction. The boy, predictably, clicks his tongue with disdain. “Damian Wayne. Robin Four. The assassi- Actually, I guess we have two assassins. Whatever. The assassin. The walking thesaurus. The baby. Born to-”

“I. Am. NOT. A baby,” Damian ground out, suddenly wielding a knife that must’ve appeared out of thin air because nobody, including the Mountain’s sensors, had seen it on him earlier. The kid held the knife out, the tip pointed at Dick’s chest. To everyone’s blatant shock, which really had only been increasing over the course of the day, Dick’s only reaction was to reach out and ruffle the kid’s hair, ignoring the growl this elicited. He glanced down a moment later, eyes narrowing as they caught on the knife. “Where’d you get that? I know it’s not yours.”

“Tt. You underestimate me, Grayson. That is your mistake.”

“I’ve never underestimated you, Little D. But you should really give that back to La’gann.”

“Wh-” La’gann gaped and suddenly reached around his belt, realizing that one of his working knives was, in fact, missing. “Hey!”

The child huffed and threw the knife without even looking. It embedded itself in the ground a foot in front of La’gaan’s feet, and the boy hesitated for a moment before grumbling and reaching to pick it up.

“Nice toss,” Dick muttered with a proud smile, then went back to his aggressive gesturing. “Anyway! Damian Wayne! Robin Four! The assassin, the walking thesaurus, the not-baby. The only bloodson of Bruce Wayne. Raised in very, uh… dark and… unique?… circumstances, and also trained to be an assassin from birth, but differently from Cass. Regardless, he has a super fun upbringing just like all of us, full of blood and death and everything, and then he finally convinces his mother to tell him who his father is via ritual single combat, as you do. We find out that Damian exists when he’s around eight and he’s living with Cass, Tim, Jason and I at Wayne Manor by the time he’s nine. By the time he’s ten, he’s the fourth Robin, because as good as the four of us are at keeping secrets, it’s hard to keep them from a tiny assassin who lives in your house and is suspicious of everything you do. Also, he’s good. I know because I’m the genius who didn’t fucking see or hear him following me one night when I slipped out of the house to get to Bat work. So we kind of have no choice but to introduce him to Batman, because he’s already there and because Bats already knows we all live together and have a new sibling and he’s curious. So we have a new Robin. He learns how humans interact, kind of-” Damian growled at him, “and decides that he might not need to kill Tim to prove himself the superior Robin, after all!”

“You make it sound as if I like him,” Damian muttered. 

“No, I do not make it sound that way, but yes, we know you do actually like him.”

Damian scoffed. “Perhaps I no longer wish for his painful demise.”

“Yeah, whatever, Demon Brat,” Jason chuckled.

“Wait!” Wondergirl said, eyes narrowed, “If he’s Robin, what’s Tim?” 

Expectant, wide eyes turned to Dick from the entire group. He bit his lip imperceptibly. He had told them a lot, but he wouldn’t tell them about his brief tenure as Batman. That was just… too close. He sighed. “I… fired Tim. About a year and a half back. I had a fair amount of influence with Batman and I decided that Damian needed Robin more than he did right then. Although, I… went about it poorly. Very poorly. We’ve worked through it. We do a lot of working through stuff, huh?” He chuckled darkly and shook himself until he brightened. “Tim is Robin here because it’s, well… a lot easier to explain. In Gotham, he’s Red Robin. Works with us, of course — Bats are pretty hard to separate — but he isn’t strictly Batman’s partner anymore.” He clapped his hands together, closing out his final flailing gesture, and rocked on his heels nervously. “So. That’s our story. Like… all of it.” He glanced at Jason. “...Definitely more than we’ve ever told. To anyone.”

“More than Bats would’ve liked, I’m sure,” Jason said lowly, finally turning his face up from the floor, though he was still looking at it. He tweaked his head and re-evaluated. “Then again, he would probably prefer that we don’t even know each other’s names. Thank god we do, though. I would hate to have to call you Nightwing at home like it isn’t a terrible name.”

“Hey, it’s an excellent name! Plus, it’s mine, so it’s even better just because it’s attached to my beautiful face and genius brain.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Goldie.”

Dick grumbled good-naturedly, thankful for the reprieve from the heavy content of their lives. No matter how lightly or happily he had tried to say it, he knew the words still came out for what they were. But at least they knew. At least it was over.

There was a long pause. A very long pause. Like, a concerningly long pause, and Dick could not stress enough just how much he wanted someone other than him to speak. It ended up being Barbara.

“That was the most ‘Bat’ way we possibly could’ve done that,” She muttered.

“It was one of the more ‘Bat’ things you’ve ever done, actually, yeah,” Jason said immediately.

“Although the hand gestures did give it a distinct personal flare,” Damian added. 

More silence. And then Dick laughed. Hard, rattling, bone-deep laughter, the kind of deranged cackle that nobody on the Team had heard since he had held the mantle of Robin. Instinctively, Conner felt the urge to roll his eyes in resignation, as if he had turned around to discover a distinct lack of thirteen-year-old ninja in the place where the damn kid had just been standing. M’gann grinned despite herself. She missed that laugh, whether she tended to like what it meant or not. Maybe… well, if these weird Bat-siblings could make Dick heave that long-departed legendary cackle… maybe they were doing something right.

The Bats began laughing along with him in their own ways, of which only Barbara’s included actual recognizable laughter, while Jason’s was an odd mix of scoffs and guffaws and Damian’s was nothing more than a thin smile and a twinkle of his eye. It was… good.

It was happy. At least for a moment, it was happy, and that wasn’t something you could ever count on with Bats. M’gann smiled fondly.

Finally, Dick seemed to get himself somewhat under control and stood from his doubled-over posture, wiping a tear from his eye. “I don’t know what you expected,” he giggled a bit. “What kind of Bat would I be if I weren’t an emotionally stunted jackass?”

“I thought we decided it was ‘emotionally stunted deranged lunatics’,” Jason said sincerely.

“That fits you better than the rest of us, Todd,” Damian said, only snapping a little, which was his way of trying to show good humor. Jason just raised an eyebrow and ruffled his brother’s hair.

Garfield piped up from the center of the group. “It’s like seeing all of Batman’s different personalities at the same time.” He reconsidered. “Plus Dick.”

“Yeah, I’ve never seen Batman make a pun and then ask the guy he’s fighting for a congratulatory high-five,” Blue Beetle added.

“You’re never gonna let me forget that, are you?”

“Nope.” Jaime grinned wide. He must’ve been taking after Bart. He shook his head slowly. “Wasn’t even a good pun, hermano. You deserved no forgiveness.”

“You know, I appreciate your honesty.”

“So Tim really isn’t Robin?” Bart said quickly, partially because it looked like he had been dying to ask a question the whole time, and partially because that was his slowest speed setting. He rubbed at the nape of his neck.

“Tt,” Damian scoffed, surprising nobody, “of course he’s not. Why would he be when nearly anybody with two feet would be a better option?”

Bart looked startled. “Nightwing, didn’t you say he stopped trying to kill Tim?”

“Well, he at least stopped trying to kill him physically. We’re still working on verbal and psychological warfare.”

“Do not presume me foolish enough to wage psychological warfare on somebody like Drake,” Damian hissed. “I know better than to try to parse out a psyche that bizarre.” 

“What about Barbara?” Conner asked, deliberately ignoring the tiny assassin, which pissed him off just as intended. 

“It’s like Dick said. My father is the police commissioner in Gotham; I live at home, not with them,” Barbara explained. “But Batman and my dad have always worked together, and Dick and I grew up together, so I connected the Robin dots eventually. Bats took me under his wing when I did; I had always known him and he had always been good to me, but he decided to become my mentor when I showed some actual promise, I guess. He’s good with kids, y’know? I mean, us, sure, but really little kids, mostly. Kinda has a soft spot for them. I think it comes from saving so many of them. Either way, he’s almost like a family friend of ours, and he met me when I was a toddler through my dad — I’ve known him longer than Dick has. I think he might’ve babysat me a few times. We get along well. It works out.”

Shock overwhelmed the boy’s faces. “B… babysat…?” Jason stuttered, mouth gaping open. 

“Why haven’t you told us this before?” Dick whispered, eyes slowly filling up with excitement to the point where they could almost see a gas tank meter on his temple. 

“I won’t stand for your attempts to blackmail my mentor, Grayson.” Damian folded his arms and looked slightly away. “At least not without me.”

Jason pulled out his phone and opened the reminders app. Out of the corner of his eye, Dick spied on his typing: ‘BATS BABYSAT BABS’, set to notify him two hours from right then. He set it to highest priority and made sure there was an audible alarm attached. When he put his phone back in his pocket, Dick shot him a look, and Jason flashed a wicked grin at his brother. “Just to be safe.”

~


	5. Hamlet's Soliloquy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot going on in Mount Justice right now. You know what more they needed? Shakespeare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I mention Duke in this chapter and I fully realize that he wouldn't fit into this timeline at all but I'm just gonna go ahead and pretend that's not a thing because, uh... artistic license? Haha?
> 
> Anyway, I've completed my first ever fic! I'm really proud of myself even if I genuinely have no idea if it's any good. Thank you so much to everyone who commented, it means so much to me! I'm doing my best to reply but attending classes via Zoom is making life a little wonky, which is why this chapter is coming out at 4 am. Yay!

“So you really are all… uh, Robins, I guess,” Garfield said. He was sitting on the floor of Mount Justice in front of the infirmary, where Tim, who was Robin but also actually wasn’t, had been specially treated for a gunshot wound on account of his lack of spleen, which was also new information. There was a lot of new information coming in today. “And also you’re all siblings because Dick is clingy?”

“Yep,” Jason said, grinning. “He keeps convincing our dad to adopt every new Bat protege rather than maybe letting someone else handle the messed up ninja children for once. The house is a bit hectic.”

Gar’s features all smushed together in confusion. “But how the hell has Bruce Wayne not figured out that you guys are, like… uh, yeah, messed up ninja children?”

Dick felt a pinch of nervousness flit through him. He could talk his way out of this one, but if the Team started getting too fixated on it, asking too many more questions that got too specific, it would get a lot harder to keep everything where it needed to be. They needed to-

“Oh, he knows.”

Dick froze. 

He flicked his gaze over to see Jason, nonchalant as ever, looking like he hadn’t just dropped the biggest bomb he possibly could have on their ability to keep this secret, short of just telling everyone who Batman was. He barely noticed Barbara, just as frozen as him, and Damian, almost imperceptibly reaching for the katana strapped to his back above his hips. Wait, no, he needed to be noticing that, actually. Dick’s immediate instinct was to punch Jason in the face, of course, but he knew that Damian’s would be to kill everyone in the room who  _ wasn’t  _ a Bat on the grounds that “they knew too much”. Dick swatted absently at his youngest brother’s hand as he struggled to connect a few synapses and move some information along. 

Before that could happen, though, Jason opened his stupid fat mouth again. “He’s known since Dick was Robin. Batman told him.”

Dick’s jaw dropped, and he was genuinely surprised by the response, but he could definitely work with it, although he would still have to masterfully act his way out of this one. Dick belonged at Juilliard. Fuck, actually, he probably should’ve gone to college in general. God knew they could afford it.

“Batman… told Bruce?” He repeated, swallowing thickly. “I-I mean, I knew Bruce knew, but I didn’t know Batman knew Bruce knew.”

Jason blinked. Damian blinked. Barbara blinked. The entire Team blinked.

Dick blinked, and reminded himself to never apply to Juilliard or college in general. “I mean that I had figured out Bruce was aware of what we were doing. I just…” he trailed off.

“You didn’t know he found out through B,” Jason supplied, and Dick nodded slowly. Jason nodded back. It suddenly looked like everyone was blinking and nodding, like some kind of loose-jointed bobblehead baby doll, the kind that shut their eyes when you laid them down, as if real children actually went to bed that easily. Funny, but Dick knew better. He wouldn’t be bested by plastic toddlers when he had lived with a tiny assassin for these past years.

Wow, okay. Definitely never applying to college.

“Tt,” Damian cut in when Dick started taking a bit too long to respond. “Grayson, were you truly unaware? Father is smarter than you appear to give him credit for, you cretin. How would he fail to notice if his children were missing?”

Jason nodded. “The guy is pretty clingy.”

“And it’s not like he’s never met Batman,” Barbara added. “The two of them are some of the only people keeping the city from falling apart. Of course they talk more than just business.”

Dick was startled. Apparently he was the Bat who most needed acting lessons. Shit. “But then why didn’t Bruce say anything when I was Robin? He only told me he knew when it was Jason.”

Jason grinned. “It probably seemed too ridiculous to keep pretending he didn’t know by the time it was me. I came home with way too many bruises to miss.”

“Ugh.” Dick dragged a hand down his face. “You mean all those bruises that you totally could’ve avoided?”

“He’s the brawler Robin, though,” Barbara said, shrugging. “How else would he have proven how cool he was or whatever?”

“Battle scars,” Jason said proudly, planting his hands on his hips. He looked stupid, Dick decided, but Dick had also decided a long time ago that he just always looked like that. Whatever.

“Or you were simply not good enough to win a fight unscathed, Todd,” Damian pointed out. Jason swatted at him and he shifted, not allowing the hit to land. No battle scars would be coming from Jason today. 

“So _Bruce_ _Wayne_ ,” La’gaan began, eyebrows raised theatrically, “knows that his precious magazine-cover children are out every night beating up thugs on the streets, and he’s just okay with that?”

“I feel like you’re forgetting that the precious magazine-cover children are literally us,” Dick said before Jason could cut in and ruin more things. He had neglected to watch Damian’s mouth, though, and he realized this half a second too late. He watched in slow motion as the katana materialized in his hand and he leapt into a fighting stance in front of his family all in one motion. The though that  _ this is why Barbara and I should’ve been the only ones to do this  _ flitted miserably through Dick’s mind for the briefest moment as he lunged forward and caught Damian around the middle just as he went to jump at La’gaan.

“How dare you insinuate such things about my father!” He crowed, wriggling in Dick’s grasp. Dick set him down and glared until he sheathed the blade and settled for turning his nose up at his opponent. “Perhaps you are simply jealous that you hatched from an egg, Fish Boy. You wouldn’t have a father to know of.”

La’gaan looked startled and his eyes narrowed in offense, which was totally fair, because Damian could really be a brat. Or a Bitch Baby, as Tim put it. Jason tended to like that one more.

“I’m really sorry about him,” Dick said sincerely, shoving Damian over to Barbara because he knew that Jason would only encourage him. “Being raised by assassins doesn’t lend itself well to social skills. We’re working on it.”

“Are we?” Jason muttered, and Dick elbowed him quickly. 

“We’re working on it.” They were only kind of working on it. Maybe they had gotten a little too used to threats on their lives by a murderous preteen. Oh well; what can you do?

La’gaan just hmphed and folded his arms. In the brief, awkward silence that followed, Jaime turned over his shoulder and muttered something like, “No,  _ tarado,  _ we’re obviously not doing that!” He paused, then scrunched up his eyebrows and flattened his lips, speaking probably louder than he intended. “How am  _ I  _ the one being unreasonable?” He turned quickly to Bart, searching for a second opinion. “Of the two of us, who’s more  _ unreasonable _ : the asshole metal bug eating my spine, or the normal guy minding his business and trying not to kill people?”

Bart grinned, and Jaime’s face immediately filled with regret. He should’ve asked Gar. “I dunno, Blue, I’ve seen Scarab make some pretty good calls.”

Jaime flinched as if someone had just yelled loudly in his ear, then narrowed his eyes at his best friend. “Traitor,” he grumbled. He faced forward again.

It made Dick remember he was probably supposed to be talking. “Uh, but, yes, Bruce knows,” he finally followed up. “And yes, he’s okay with it. It took a lot of convincing, but he gets it now. There’s, uh…” he took momentary stock of himself and his brothers, counting a peppy ninja acrobat, a ten-year-old assassin, a child CEO in a pair of bird wings, and a gun-toting zombie man-child. Dick had a thought, then, that he instantly hated:  _ Emotionally stunted costumed freaks - heroes in a half shell, turtle power.  _ That was tough. “Not a lot else for people like us to do, y’know?”

Jason frowned. “I dunno, Babs could’ve been normal, and you and Tim could’ve come close enough to pass.”

“You think Tim could’ve passed as normal?” Dick muttered incredulously, eyes wide but brows drawn. “Are we talking about the same Tim here? About yea high,” he gestured to his shoulder, “needs a haircut, super genius detective child who has never slept once in his life? That Tim?”

“Fair point.”

“Grayson has a few too many extraneous joints to pass as a normal human.”

“Also a fair point.”

“I have a normal number of joints.”

“That’s literally impossible,” Barbara said. “Legs aren’t supposed to do that.”

Dick scowled at her. “Aren’t you the human anatomy scholar?”

“There are always exceptions to rules, Grayson,” Damian said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Dick just hoped he wasn’t taking after Tim’s ability to exploit loopholes, because holy shit, that would be hell. “You have always been one.”

“Oh shit,” Jason said, and he gave a full-body wince before he whistled and peeled his eyes wide open for Barbara to see. “Dami really said  _ you a funny bitch.  _ Go off, I guess.”

“I said nothing of the sort,” Damian scoffed. “...I merely  _ insinuated  _ something of the sort.”

Dick stumbled backwards, clutching a hand over his heart. “This slander… from my own family? I’m crushed. I’m literally so crushed right now.” His other hand flew to his face, where the back of his wrist pressed against his forehead. “I will now recite Hamlet’s soliloquy from memory as an outlet for my sorrow.  _ To be _ -”

Jason slapped a hand over his brother’s mouth. “Fuck you, I’m not about to let you butcher a literary masterpiece.” There was a pause and his face scrunched up. “I know you’re licking my hand, asshole, it’s not going anywhere.” Dick quickly tilted his chin up and Jason yelped, yanking his hand away and turning scandalized eyes back. “Did you seriously just bite me!?” He reached to wipe his hand on Damian, who heaved a mortified gasp and growled, launching himself onto Jason’s back in the next instant and tightening his arms around his neck. Jason fought back valiantly by backing into a wall over and over again until Damian got off him, but was overtaken when Damian switched tactics to tackling him instead. Dick shouted wordlessly for no discernible reason and threw himself into the fray, clearly undecided between splitting his brothers up, egging them on, or throwing some punches himself. Barbara looked on from the sidelines, occasionally shouting  _ left  _ or  _ right  _ or  _ duck  _ to whoever she was rooting for, though she switched alliances every few seconds. 

Several minutes later, the brawl came to an abrupt halt when Cass appeared out of thin air and snagged Jason and Damian by the backs of their uniform collars, holding them apart, and effectively froze Dick with a foot in the middle of his chest. She just scowled at Barbara, who grinned sheepishly. Cass raised a trademark disapproving eyebrow at the thwarted combatants. “Too loud. Little brother sleeps.” She paused, gathering her words up again, and for the first time it occured to Dick that it might seem awkward to an outsider. It didn’t bother them at all. “First sleep in his life. Let him.”

Jason relaxed with a grin, and she let him go as she lowered her foot from the blue Nightwing emblem, though she kept her hold on Damian a little longer; his shoulders were still too tense for her to believe he wasn’t about to kill anyone. “Maybe we should start sedating him more often,” Jason suggested. He sobered slightly. “You stay out here, Cassie, I’ll take a shift. I, uh… need to see him.”

Cass smiled, understanding shining in her eyes. She said nothing, but pulled the infirmary door open and held it for him as he walked through. After a beat, she let Damian go, and he folded his arms and grumbled into his slumped posture. She looked to Dick and Barbara. “Who are your friends?” She said carefully, nodding at the Team.

Dick jolted and steadied himself before the surprise showed on his face. Uh. The Team. Right. He had kinda sorta forgotten they were there. Maybe he shouldn’t have let them see their leader devolve into childhood fraternal pettiness; they had already learned enough new shit about him for one day.

“What the hell is happening with today?” Wondergirl muttered in by far the quietest voice Dick had ever heard from her. She looked up at him, less angry but definitely more confused, and drew her eyebrows together. “Are there any  _ more  _ Robins or Bats or whatever that we should know about?”

Dick thought of Steph and Duke, or Robin and Robin, who had taken the night off patrol to go sit in a diner and work on their respective school projects that they had both pushed to the last minute. Well, Duke had taken the night off, anyway; Steph was only there because Bruce had threatened to bench her for a week if she didn’t just sit her ass down and do her schoolwork for once. Dick blinked. “Uh, no, it’s just us.”

None of the Bats showed it, but Dick knew they’d be laughing at him later. That wasn’t his most convincing delivery. Damn, maybe he really did need to be taking acting classes… 

“So there’s only, uh,” Bart paused to count, even though they all knew he didn’t need to, “-five bird-themed vigilantes hanging out in one city? Man, you guys are running low. I could lend you some of mine if you want.”

“Yeah, that’s all we need,” Barbara said, chuckling appreciatively. Bart was good at lightening the mood — or rather, at crashing the mode. “More psycho strays to pick up. I bet your dad would love that.”

Dick raised an eyebrow and glanced at Cass and Damian. “I mean, I’ll honestly be shocked if we never get another sibling. Hell, we get new pets every twenty minutes at this point.”

“Grayson, you’re a fool if you don’t believe animals are far more tolerable than all of you.”

“I have lost count of them,” Dick countered. “One of these days I’ll walk in and you’ll have an anteater in the kitchen. We can’t turn the Manor into a zoo.”

Cass pointed very decisively at him. “Funny bitch,” she proclaimed flatly, as if stating a fact. 

“Indeed,” was Damian’s only response. 

Immediately, Dick’s wrist flew to his forehead, and he began shouting, again for no reason.  _ “To be, or not to-” _

He was interrupted when there came a thunk and the  _ shing _ of metal from the other side of the infirmary door, which jolted with the sound and strangely began to creep open. Something else hit it again, and it opened further and faster, revealing two batarangs buried in the wood near the knob. A deep, loud voice floated through the new opening. “Don’t test me, funny bitch, I am this close!” Dick could sort of make out Jason holding up two fingers to show a gap between them, except he was pretty sure his fingers were actually pressed together. “This fucking close!”

Dick turned around to the door, voice even louder as he leaned forward and let his mouth drop open dumbly.  _ “To be, or not to be -- that is- _ woah!” He ducked quickly as a third batarang went sailing over his head, brushing his bangs back from his eyes as it went. 

“Aim sucks,” Cass called, and shifted to catch the batarang that had subsequently been thrown at her head, as well. “Aim still sucks,” she clarified. Barbara gave her an incredibly not-subtle high-five. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?” Jason called back. They were separated by about forty feet of empty infirmary and five more of distance from the door; they probably didn’t need to be having this conversation like this. Or at all. Dick wasn’t about to be the mature one, though.

He stood and leaned farther forward, arms outstretched to his sides dramatically before slowly turning his fists over and flipping up both his middle fingers, fixing his brother with a challenging glare. He yelled as flatly and boredly as he could, for maximum piss off-age.  _ “To be, or not to be -- that is the question: whether ‘tis nobler in the mind-”  _ another batarang came flying towards him, and he dodged left absent-mindedly,  _ “-to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to-” _

“Get off the stage!” Jason booed, pitching three shuriken and a bola Dick’s way.

Ever the acrobat, Dick danced and flipped around them, and when they had passed he stayed hopping between his feet lightly, fingers raised. _“-Take arms against a sea of troubles-”_ he jumped four more shuriken and two throwing knives, _“-and by opposing end them.”_ Dick crouched to avoid more flying knives and turned the motion into an appropriately dramatic fall to his knees, looking lovingly between each of his upturned middle fingers. “ _To die, to sleep -- no more!”_ He leapt to his feet and spun around, plucking Damian from his place scowling beside Cass and clutching him in one arm, like a skull to which he could preach, though he did have to give up one of his outstretched middle fingers. The boy squawked and flailed, but Dick had a firm grip on his shoulders, pinning his arms, and was holding him off the ground, so he eventually just went limp and waited for his soul to descend straight to hell. He sighed heavily as Dick dodged six more knives and dragged him along for the ride.

“Damian, move your damn bobblehead, I’m trying to murder Big Bird!” Damian wordlessly tilted his head to the right, away from any of Dick’s vital organs that Jason might be aiming for.

_ “And by a sleep to say we end the heartache-”  _ Dick fought to keep the grin from his face or voice as he vaulted Tim’s birdarang. He continued monologuing, but he could hear Barbara and Cass move behind him to inspect the growing pile of weaponry that had been hitting the wall behind Dick and clattering to the ground. He was also fully aware of the shocked, maybe slightly scared faces of the Team, but he was just having a bit too much fun to care. They could deal with that later; right now he had a performance to give.

Barbara picked up the birdarang and looked back through the door, eyes narrowed. “This isn’t even yours!” 

Cass raised an eyebrow and caught a steel-toed boot that had apparently been thrown to the pile. “Aim still sucks,” she called again.

“Fuck, Cass, help, we can’t let him finish this!” Jason cried, throwing a stethoscope and his other boot. “It would be a disgrace to all classic literature!”

Cass shrugged. “On Jay’s side,” she declared, and she heaved the boot over her shoulder and lightly threw it the much shorter distance from her stance to Dick. It hit him in the back and his words almost stuttered, but instead he turned just long enough to assess the situation and implement plan b: do more flips, because that was always his solution anyway. Cass tossed back the stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff and said, “Barbara, with us!” 

Barbara, of course, responded by immediately taking up the call to arms, though it was clear her intention was to knock Damian out of Dick’s grasp; she wanted them all ganged up against him.

And, as it turned out, she would get her wish, because just as Dick was in the middle of telling Cass and Barbara about  _ “the pangs of despised love, the law's delay”,  _ he turned back to monitor Jason’s side and and jolted to a stop with a gasp, suddenly dropping Damian (who fell into a roll and immediately appeared behind Cass) so that he could put his arms straight out in front of him. “No, wait-!” He yelped, but it was already too late.    
  


With a battlecry to make Aragorn proud, from the door emerged not a knife, not a boot, not a medical implement, but rather Timothy Drake, sailing through the air in his full lanky, bony, spleenless glory, expert ninja feet aimed precisely at the blue emblem on Dick’s chest. 

Dick watched memories flash before his eyes -- not his life, no, but rather, of all those times when he was younger that Conner had grabbed his hands, swung him around and launched him directly at an opponent. Dick had been a fool. All this time, he had been a fool. He had thought his brothers didn’t know about that, he had thought Tim wouldn’t have found out even though he had all the world’s information at his fingertips, he had thought that non-meta, non-alien Jason wasn’t strong enough to throw a sixteen-year-old as a human projectile, and oh, what a fool he had been. He would pay the price for his negligence, of that much he was sure, because it was coming at him right now in the form of his pointy-elbowed nerd brother at a thousand miles an hour. 

The only thought he had time for before Tim made contact was, eloquently,  _ ah, shit. _

Tim’s feet hit Dick’s chest, but his knees also crumpled and his torso folded down, lessening the impact as Dick knew he would, because none of them would ever actually hurt each other. Well, not these days anyway. One problem: Tim’s absorbance of the force of the impact resulted in the throw still landing at a considerable, albeit slowed, speed, except now it was also Tim’s entire body that collided with Dick all at once. Dick let out an  _ oof  _ and instinctively raised his arms to catch his brother, but he was a bit too focused on that to steady himself, and oh god, they were totally tipping backwards like a chair balanced on two legs. Unbelievable. Dick’s teachers had always warned him about this moment, and here it was. What a fool he’d been all this time. What a fool.

With a manly shriek, Dick fell back, landing firmly on his ass before the weight and momentum of Tim on his chest forced him down until he was just lying flat on the ground, blinking up at the ceiling in front of the infirmary in Mount Justice. Everything was suddenly very still. He pried his head up and saw Tim, already looking up at him with a huge, dumb grin on his face. 

It was the purest, sweetest, most wholesome thing Dick had ever seen in his life, and suddenly he didn’t feel like he’d been a fool all this time; no, he felt like everything he’d ever done was leading up to this, to being able to help put this smile on his little brother’s face.

“Hey, Dick,” Tim said. “I got up again.”

Dick blinked at him, and suddenly all his breath was leaving him in barking cackles that made him throw his head back and almost slam it into the floor just to get his smile to be larger, like he needed more room to release all this laughter before it bubbled over and burst out of his chest itself. 

When he looked up again, though, Tim was cackling too, that classic Robin laugh, and he could see Jason grinning and chuckling from where he stood leaning in the doorway, and Barbara giggling and pulling a reluctantly smiling Damian along with her as she moved over to sit on the floor near the two of them, and Cass appearing beside Jason to jokingly toss him his boots with a grin and to lean her head against his shoulder. 

This. This was good. 

Dick’s grin turned fond and he lifted his arms to wrap around Tim, hugging him gently to him as laughter continued to shake them all. Tim turned his head and rested his cheek against his brother’s chest, warm and solid and familiar, and he could hear the strong heartbeat thrumming inside. It set him at ease, soothed the nerves that he didn’t even know were aggravated, and it made him start to droop into the clutches of sleep once again.

Dick could feel his little brother growing steadily heavier, and he let his laughter subside in time with Tim’s apparent exhaustion until he was finally reduced to lying on the floor, grinning and feeling lighter than he had in a long time. 

This was good.

He reached a hand up and Jason took it instantly, pulling him upright as slowly as possible in the hopes that Tim was already asleep and would stay that way, but he wasn’t and he wouldn’t. “Hmm?” Tim muttered, fluttering his eyes open.

Damian was sitting on his knees in front of them, his smile gone but the ease in his features still very much there, at least to those who knew him. “Your circus act was rather effective, Timothy,” he mumbled, and Dick found himself surprised, but grinning again. “It freed me from the clutches of this moronic… f-funny bitch.”

Jason in particular burst out laughing, harder than Dick had probably ever seen, and slid down the door frame until he was pooled in a heap over the threshold, wheezing for air and clutching his stomach. Dick allowed his own laughter to pass and left Jason to his musings before he gathered Tim up in his arms with a grin and stood, chuckling as his little brother burrowed his face into the crook of Dick’s neck. “Okay, Babybird, that’s enough crime fighting for today,” he said, waiting for the remaining Bats to get to their feet.

“Listen, he fought valiantly. And it really was a crime, ruining it like that,” Jason said, occasionally letting a giggle slip past his lips and still holding his stomach like he’d just done a sick ab workout. 

“Alright, alright,” Dick said, “who wants Tim duty?”

A chorus of  _ me  _ and  _ I will  _ filled the air, and Dick looked around at each of them before sighing good-naturedly. “Then I guess we’ll all have to do it.” A lightbulb flashed in his brain and he looked over at the Team. They were, for lack of a better term, fucked up. Confused and shocked and scared and excited and a million damn things that Dick really didn’t want to deal with right now because yeah, this was his team, but dammit, his little brother was hurt and he just wanted to hold him and take care of him and make sure he got better because that was the kind of annoying mother-brother he was. He considered the group helplessly.“Oh. Uh…”

“No further questions,” Jason dismissed quickly with a wicked grin, like the petulant rich kids everyone thought they were. “We’re very busy people, yes, very busy,” he said, and turned on his heel and strode back into the infirmary.

Cass nodded and followed him. “Goodbye,” she said as she crossed the threshold, raising one hand to the Team.

“Tt. Come along, Richard, I’d imagine we’re family bonding again,” Damian scoffed without heat, and he turned and walked off without waiting for Dick to follow.

Dick turned the Team an apologetic smile and shifted on his feet. “Look, you’ve, uh… got a lot to process. For now. We’ll tell you more later if you want, but… he needs us right now.” With that, he nodded goodbye and followed his youngest brother inside the infirmary. Barbara was saying something behind him, dismissing them properly, probably, but Dick was too far away to hear, and he didn’t really care right about now, anyway. He walked over and gently laid his precious cargo down on the bed they had been using, carefully checking his stitches and rebandaging them before pulling the blanket up to his chin and sitting down on the mattress beside his head to run his fingers soothingly through Tim’s unruly hair. Damian checked the blackout blinds and reported back with a nod, and all of them removed their masks, allowing themselves to sit for a moment in the wake of it all. They… didn’t really need these anymore, Dick realized as he turned the domino over in his hands, at least not in the mountain. Everyone knew who they were. But… it didn’t change anything. He was still him; they all were and always had been themselves and a mask didn’t change that. Although he was still gonna wear one. Tradition and all that.

He heard the door click shut and Barbara walked over, pulling her cowl off her head and settling down into a chair. She paused a moment, then said, “He probably shouldn’t have done that. Pulls stitches.”

“I checked ‘em, they’re good. And you’re right, he probably shouldn’t have done that,” Dick said quietly, still looking down at Tim’s peacefully closed eyes. This time, though, he noted that even though the grin from before wasn’t on his lips, it still ghosted over his entire face. For once, he looked… young. Like a normal kid. Dick smiled. “But I’m glad it happened.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw sleepy nods and smiles from his family around him. Slowly, they moved into having a quiet conversation, passing stories and memories between them all, flowing on for hours even after Cass and Damian had both fallen asleep all tangled up in the same cushy chair. And here, like this, this was what Dick wanted. This was everything. This was good.

~

Elsewhere in Mount Justice, the Team had gathered unintentionally in a TV room; tense, awkward silence permeated the space, filling every breath and corner. It was suffocating, dampening, tight and itchy, and the stony figures that sat inside it were struggling not to choke on their words. 

Jaime Reyes was the one who finally broke it. Nervously, he looked up at his friends, brows drawn tightly and shoulders near his ears. “So… was it just me or was this the weirdest day ever?”

The room erupted into grateful chaos, cries of  _ thank god you said it  _ and  _ what the hell is wrong with them  _ and  _ I think the tiny one is gonna kill us in our sleep,  _ but really, it was all just talk, and they knew it. Nightwing was their leader and Robin was an exceptional teammate, and they both had the Team’s trust through and through. They didn’t lose that; that wasn’t what was so strange about today.

What was so strange about today was that the Team had finally been shown what it looks like to do things the Bat way -- and yet they still had no idea what the everloving fuck it was.


End file.
